


(the gaps will never mend)

by Misprinting (misprinting)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Amputation, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Gen, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-01
Updated: 2016-05-01
Packaged: 2018-06-05 14:11:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6707440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misprinting/pseuds/Misprinting
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All this comes between the end of Captain America: Civil War and (spoilers) the mid-credits scene. (Spoilers spoilers spoilers. So many spoilers.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	(the gaps will never mend)

**Author's Note:**

> warnings and explanations at the end. title from the like's june gloom.
> 
> but one last warning: SPOILERS. for the whole of CA:CW. all of it. seriously.

Steve takes to being spirited away from the scene of the crime by a rich guy like he’s used to it, but Bucky guesses maybe that had been the point of Stark, before. 

He’s in so much pain from having the arm ripped off – and fuck Hydra for, on top of everything else, giving him something so high tech it’s got pain sensors. When T’Challa’s standing in their way, looming, silhouetted in the doorway to the outside of the bunker, for a second Bucky just wants Steve to drop him and leave. Even as he registers Steve tensing up, shifting him against his side and gripping ahold of him tighter as he squares up like the big old idiot he is, for a moment there Bucky thinks about just turning to him and slurring into Steve’s ear, ‘hey, I’m definitely not worth this.’

Bracing himself to do just that, or something equally as pointless, Bucky nearly misses T’Challa, instead of attacking, raising his hands in placation.

“Captain, I was wrong. Let me help.”

Bucky fleetingly thinks of how insufferable Steve always is when he finally bullheads people into saying that. For a second, he can see five-foot-nothing Steve with that smug face of his like it’s right in front of him. But when Steve just sags and closes his eyes in relief, Bucky remembers everything that’s happened between now and Brooklyn, remembers Steve’s been through so much shit – and a lot of it for him – between then and now.

So they’ve just been beaten half to hell and Bucky’s down an arm again, but for once they both came out the other side of this fight. For once, Bucky gets to look to his right and see his best friend holding him up. And it hits him then that his best friend looks so old; not like he’s actually aged, but like life’s hit him over and over with a battering ram.

“Time we caught a break,” Bucky says. Or at least he tries to. As soon as he tries to talk his stomach rebels and he throws up all over himself.

God bless T’Challa, though, because he’s clearly above reacting to any of it and just calmly comes in on Bucky’s other side like he helps out with brainwashed supersoldiers who’ve just had an arm ripped off every day. Even makes a calming noise as he stoops to carefully support Bucky without touching the arm, holding him up with an arm around his waist.

If he were in less pain, maybe Bucky’s brain’d be giving him some grief right now. He’s relying on people. He’s endangering people. (Endangering Steve, what’s new?) He’s getting into a quinjet with no safe exits with someone who’s just spent the last few days trying really hard to kill him.

But, hey. After the week he’s had, the emphasis on the mind-numbing in the phrase mind-numbing pain is just better than the alternative.

So when T’Challa comes at him with a sedative, Bucky’s never been so happy to fall into oblivion.

*

Bucky doesn’t know much of anything for a couple of days while T’Challa and his people fix up what’s left of the arm and apparently facilitate Steve’s breaking all his friends out of underwater jail. The first Bucky knows of that is Steve walking into his recovery room with Sam in tow, grin on his face and an inability to keep completely out of Sam’s personal space. A sure sign, Bucky remembers, that Steve’s feeling guilty and covering it up through being a little shit.

Sam seems fine, though, giving Steve shit for taking so long to come get him and being respectful of T’Challa in a way that still makes it clear Sam’s really not okay with the way T’Challa was kind of a big old hypocrite for a minute there when he was trying to kill Bucky. Bucky himself likes T’Challa, likes the way he doesn’t talk too much and is no longer trying to kill him. Also, he reminds Bucky of Steve, in his way.

But the way Sam is with T’Challa makes a nice change from the way T’Challa and Steve are being unfailingly and scarily polite to each other, like they’re little old ladies who’ve had words and now have to talk politely at church in front of their grandkids.

Sam laughs when Bucky tells him that one. Laughs like he’s surprised about it, like he didn’t expect Bucky to be funny. Which, fuck him. But also, probably, fair.

*

Bucky doesn’t feel like a funny guy most of the time, not when he’s waking up three times a night hearing the words, or thinking he’s in the chair, or that he’s got blood on his weapons or on his hands or in his mouth. 

Or waking up from watching metal fingers wrapped around Steve’s throat as he holds him under water and watches his last bubbles of air break on the water’s surface, watches the will to struggle go out from his eyes.

Or he wakes up thinking he’s back on ice.

That last one, like the sedative… It doesn’t always feel like the worst thing.

*

Even without the arm he’s sometimes too strong for his own good. 

After the sixth time he breaks a bowl or a glass or a wall when something too loud happens, Steve asks, “How can I help, Buck? What d’you need me to do?”

Bucky shrugs. And he keeps going on, keeps shrugging whenever Steve gives him that look.

And he dreams.

And he writes down his memories. The old ones and the new; the soft and the bloody.

And sometimes, when a door slams, he breaks things.

He doesn’t tell Steve ‘you’ve done enough’ even though it’s the truth, because he knows Steve doesn’t see the world that way and still deep down thinks he has to make up for all the times Bucky cleaned up his puke and made sure he didn’t starve when they were both still them.

Steve still looks a lot like he’s taken a battering ram to his gut. The least Bucky can do is not kick him when he’s still just pretending to have gotten back up again.

Bucky takes a lot of cold baths at night. It helps, to hold himself under water in the still coldness. Eyes shut or open, it doesn’t matter; all he can hear is his heartbeat. Under all that water, that thin veneer veiling the world so the lights on the ceiling blur and wobble, feeling the cold seep into his damaged brain, he doesn’t even mind when it keeps on going.

*

Sam doesn’t normally drop in on him without Steve, not now Bucky’s getting out of bed for most of the day. When he does, though, he brings movie recommendations and popcorn, or comes to poke Bucky into telling him a dumb story about Steve being dumb. He doesn’t make him talk about not sleeping, or breaking things.

“I’m not your therapist, man,” Sam reminds him whenever Bucky gets quiet and tense and watchful. And then he’ll usually tell a story of his own. A lot of the time it’ll be one about Steve, but just as often it’s about any other part of his life; the army, his family, the VA, college. 

Bucky likes Sam. He does. He’s obviously a good guy, and he’d stood with Steve to punch a lot of guys who’d really not wanted Bucky to be free right now, and a fair few who hadn’t wanted him left alive. He’s glad Steve’d had such a good guy when he’d needed one.

But that doesn’t mean he completely _wants_ to like Sam. 

Sometimes he gets the feeling that that impulse is mutual, or maybe that it would be if Sam were just a bit less of a good guy. But the thing is, Sam is a better guy even than Steve, possibly, and even though Bucky can’t help but be jealous of what Sam and Steve have now, he does still like Sam.

It’s better, though, when Steve’s not there. 

But for all Sam says he’s not Bucky’s therapist and mostly does stay well away from trying to act like one, occasionally he obviously just can’t help himself.

“Y’know, I think you and Wanda should have a chat,” Sam tells him one day, when Bucky feels fine as long as he’s sitting on his remaining hand. “I think you’d get along. Have some stuff in common.”

Steve – who is there, which might be why Bucky’s first impulse is to walk out of the room when Sam starts talking directly to him – frowns and asks, “Are you setting Buck up?”

Sam laughs obnoxiously loud so Bucky has to really speak up to make sure Sam hears it when he says, “Fuck you, Wilson.”

But a couple of days later, when they’re on their own (okay, maybe Sam’s dropping in more and more lately and maybe Bucky doesn’t hate it), Sam brings it up again.

“Look, there’s no magic fix, I’m not saying talking to her will help at all.” 

Sam’s being earnest; Bucky’s only seen him be earnest at Steve so far. It’s horrible. Bucky would run away if that weren’t pathetic. “I just think it might help to talk to someone who gets a bit of it.”

When he’s trying not to be a dick Bucky’s voice gets low and growly until he sounds more like a weapon should. He knows he used to be able to charm, too, and he knows mostly now he speaks softer than he ever did during the war, but when he thinks too much about it, about not reacting, he sounds like an angry cat would if they could speak. “I have an actual therapist, you know,” he says.

“Uh huh, I know,” Sam agrees. “Still. Think it over.”

*

Bucky doesn’t really think it over, but he does end up having to walk out on Sam and Steve after throwing his pen at the TV when the movie they’re watching has a surprise explosion in it. He’s normally fine when the noise is on TV, but whatever, his brain is fucked. Sometimes it’s extra fucked. What’s new?

Sam immediately offers to stop watching, but Bucky waves Steve and him off and leaves as quickly as he can so he can avoid actually looking at Steve and seeing that gut-punched look on his face again.

Outside, he just walks and just breathes and just concentrates on quieting down the sounds in his head that mean his heart’s still going too quick.

And he doesn’t walk into Wanda, but he does almost step on Lang, who suddenly appears under his foot as he grows back to normal size, sending them both flying.

“Oh, shit, dude, I am so sorry,” Lang is saying, while Bucky gets his fight or flight response under control and nurses a bump on the back of his head. “I was just making some ant friends, y’know, and then all of a sudden your foot was coming right at me, and I just, I can’t be stood on by a bare footed dude, you know? Gross. But I didn’t think about what’d happen when I de-shrunk, and I’m- I’m really sorry.”

Lang offers Bucky a hand and after staring at him for a second Bucky takes it, letting himself be pulled up. And he blames the bump on the head for the fact that he then says, “Ant friends?”

The enthusiastic lecture he gets on ants is no one’s fault but his own, but it is at least so boring and well-meaning that it takes the sharp edges off all the murder and blood Bucky’s brain is reminding him his hands have been responsible for. There are moments, even, when Lang glances at him from the side, that Bucky wonders if he’s doing it on purpose. 

Eventually, though, even Ant Man runs out of things to say about ants.

Or at least Bucky initially thinks that’s what’s happened as Lang trails off, saying, “Yeah, well, you get it,” but then Bucky looks up, coming out of his fugue a little, and sees that this time they’ve walked right up to Wanda. She and Barton are sat cross-legged on the ground, eyes closed, breathing deep.

Well, Barton’s on the ground. Wanda’s levitating a foot off of the ground, surrounded by a thin bubble of her red stuff which softly pops or sizzles in the air like it’s made of something between fire and water and electricity.

“You done boring him to death with all your ant talk?” Barton asks, without opening his eyes. He raises one eyebrow, though. Bucky, surprising himself, laughs.

“Hey, fuck off,” Lang tells him, flipping him off like Barton can see it through his eyelids. Maybe Barton guesses, though, since he sticks up his own middle finger in Lang’s direction.

“You fuck off,” Barton tells him, or maybe them. He says it kindly, like a dad would, Bucky imagines, though his dad had definitely never sworn like that in front of his girls. Opening his eyes and fixing Bucky with a look, Barton adds, “Or pull up a pew, if you want.”

Bucky involuntarily makes a face, but just then Wanda opens her eyes and look right into his. Her eyes are red, terrifying, and ageless. For a moment it feels like Bucky’s veins are filled with fire and it’s like she’s seeing straight into him, watching everything he’s done and everything he’s been made to be.

Then she smiles. And she pats the empty space next to her, like, ‘hey, come sit down. Come join us.’ It’s like being dosed in ice-cold water – Bucky takes a breath like it’s his first since he woke up extra crazy this morning.

He shakes his head, though, and leaves Lang quipping at Barton to head back to T’Challa’s mansion. To sit down next to Steve and watch Sam make Steve laugh while he writes down his memories: Lang and Wanda and Barton; Sam and Steve; his dad.

*

He goes back to the same spot in the gardens at the same time the next day and this time he sits down beside Wanda. She and Barton both nod at him, Wanda with a small smile.

“Sam said he’d told you to come talk to me,” Wanda tells him. Bucky nods, picking at the grass to avoid her eyes.

Barton snorts, saying, “Hell of a group we make.”

They don’t talk much, and Bucky finds its best if he doesn’t close his eyes, but he can sit, breathe, listen to two people be alive and powerful enough to stop him if needs be as they breathe beside him. He can watch the world keep going.

*

Later, Steve goes to say goodnight after they’ve spent the evening talking crap about the war, just the two of them, without even Sam there to call them old grandpas and ask them what things were like back in their day in that sarcastic voice of his.

And Bucky, thinking of Wanda floating a foot off the ground and plenty of other things he’s seen besides, grabs Steve’s sleeve to stop him and says, “hey, remember when a flying car was the craziest thing we’d ever imagined?”

Steve’s smile is like the opposite of a gut punch, whatever that is.

Bucky goes to bed hopeful.

*

Later still, holding himself cold and quiet under water, he realises he probably shouldn’t have brought up Howard Stark if he wanted to sleep.

*

Maybe that sparks off a downturn or maybe that’d been coming a long time before, but a few days later Sam’s telling Bucky a story about his mom when Bucky catches something coming at the window from the corner of his eye. And in that split second his body goes on a break from his brain as he shatters his hand on the glass coffee table getting Sam on the ground and shielded.

Sam shifts under him so he can look him in the eye as he makes calming noises and puts his hand on Bucky’s chest. 

“Hey, hey, look at me,” Sam tells him. “Let me see your hand, man. C’mon.”

Sam’s realised already that whatever’d tripped Bucky off hadn’t been what he’d imagined, but it takes Bucky a moment or two longer to get to where Sam’s waiting for him.

Then the pain in his hand starts.

He collapses off Sam to the side, gritting his teeth, groaning, letting Sam gently take hold of his wrist and then press down to stop the bleeding.

“You’ll be fine, you’ll be just fine, supersoldier,” Sam tells him. Bucky nods, but he’s looking at the ceiling to keep from staring at the blood literally running off his hand again.

It’s not the best moment for Steve to come barrelling in looking to save something.

*

Bucky, already close to falling off the tightrope that is his sanity, does not cope well with Steve’s expression when he sees the state Bucky and Sam are in and comes to understand what happened.

Some things are said that shouldn’t have been.

*

“You should’ve gone with him.”

Bucky’s voice is gravely as fuck, but, since no one pointed a gun at his head and told him to shout at Steve for twenty minutes, he’s got no one to blame but himself.

Sam ignores him, reaching over to check on his hand again – it’s still bleeding sluggishly, though it now just looks more like a cat’d raked him than that he’d put his hand through a glass table. And though his middle two fingers are splinted together, they’ve started to itch like they’re half-way done with healing, too.

“You should’ve gone with Steve,” Bucky says again. 

“No I shouldn’t.” 

Sam, who’s already taken charge of removing all the shards of glass from Bucky’s room and making sure Bucky gets seen by the doctor T’Challa has on staff, now turns the TV on and settles down like he’s ready to babysit Bucky for the rest of the night.

They sit in silence for a while, Bucky staring at the bloodstain at the edge of Sam’s sleeve.

“Hey.” Sam grips the back of Bucky’s neck like he’s getting ready to shake him. Bucky knows he looks at Sam a little wildly in response. “You needed to have a shout at each other. You shouted. It’s not the end of the world.”

Bucky grits his teeth, folds his arm up against his chest and wants to either curl up into a ball or kick out at something.

“You should be with him,” he says again instead.

“Nah, that wouldn’t work for him,” Sam tells him. He does shake Bucky then, gently. Like how Bucky’d used to put his arm around Steve and mess up his hair back when he was little. “If I were with him he’d just be feeling guilty and telling me I should be looking after you.” 

Bucky shakes him off, standing. He goes to the bathroom, turning the cold tap on at the sink and leaning over it until it’s cold enough to drink and feel the chill of it go through him. Dunks his face under it and just for a second tells himself to stop breathing.

When he looks back up at the mirror it’s to see Sam behind him, standing in the doorway, leant back, arms folded. Calmly watching him.

Sam’s eyes are telling him he’s been somewhere close to where Bucky is now, but what he actually says is, “And he’d have a point.”

Bucky bares his teeth, but can’t disagree.

*

Next time he’s sat out in the garden with Wanda and Barton, breathing and watching, he mentally concedes Sam was right. He and Steve are good again; they’d both tried to apologise and decided to leave it where it belongs, buried between them. At least this time Bucky hadn’t tried to kill Steve.

(He’d just told Steve that sometimes he wanted to die.)

Sat next to Wanda and her crackling magic, Bucky takes a deep breath and admits to himself that Sam is doing better by Steve than he can do right now. That, yes, Steve still needs someone to look after him, but it doesn’t have to be him right now.

He doesn’t have to keep going because Steve needs him.

So what does he have to keep going for?

*

It’s like he’s made a decision, after that. His body doesn’t let him sleep anymore and he can’t stop reliving December 16 1991 like his brain is a stuck record.

He hadn’t understood, at the time, because these people were all new to him and Steve wasn’t. So he hadn’t completely understood that these people weren’t new to Steve, weren’t even just friends to Steve. They were Steve’s family. He’d fucked up Steve’s whole family and there isn’t a one he’d not been ready to kill after Zemo had spent ten minutes with him.

It could happen again.

He can’t let it happen again.

*

It’s obvious Steve sees the warning signs in Bucky first, but maybe because of the last time he decides it’s best if he doesn’t bring it up.

Instead, he sends Sam.

And Sam is relentless. More than that, though, he’s kind, and funny, and never pushes Bucky when he feels like if he says another word he’ll explode. He just asks, ‘so you can’t sleep?’ and makes it sound like everything’s fixable.

Which, when he hasn’t properly slept for four days, Bucky finds hard to believe.

“I just can’t do this.”

Bucky’s thinking of letting Steve down, but also of all the rest. Of all the memories spinning through his brain at any moment. It feels like if he could just write them out enough times in his own blood, maybe then, maybe his ghosts would be satisfied, but he knows that’s not possible. His body, his hands have done too much. He’ll never be without them. Not while it could happen again. 

“I can’t be awake anymore. I don’t want to be awake,” Bucky says. His voice is low, small, quiet, like he wants his brain to be and like it can’t be anymore. He’s been out of the ice too long. Everything is too much. He can’t look at Sam and see pity, so instead he looks at Sam’s hands. Finds them relaxed. Feels calmer. “I’m worried,” Bucky says, “about what Steve’ll do if I…”

Even looking at Sam’s hands, which have rescued people, which are loose, unthreatening, he can’t finish that thought. But he doesn’t have to.

Sam asks him, “You thinking about suicide?”

In that moment, laughing is all Bucky can do. It sounds like a dead man’s laugh, though; like someone who knows they’re a hundred years old and that their time is long since past.

But he shakes his head anyway. 

“I’m just thinking about it all stopping. I haven’t thought about how.” Bucky shrugs, though it takes effort to do so. Too much effort. And then he laughs again, because now he’s thinking about how. “I’ve only got one wrist to slit, though. Would that be enough, d’you think?”

Sam doesn’t laugh, but he doesn’t cry or pity him either, like Steve might. He reaches out and takes hold of Bucky’s hand.

“I don’t want to be here,” Bucky hears himself admit; his voice is so quiet he can almost pretend it’s not him saying it. “But. But I don’t want to leave Steve here alone again either.” He holds Sam’s hand tighter, worries it’s too tight. Then says, “I can’t keep going knowing with the right words anyone–”

Sam nods, and keeps ahold of his hand, and says, “I know you can’t. I know.”

*

Sam must talk to Steve, because the next time Bucky sees Steve he walks into Bucky’s room wearing forced calm like armour.

All of that cracks pretty quickly when he steps into Bucky’s space and pulls him into a hug, though.

Whatever happens when they’re stood there holding onto each other, cracked open and raw, hurting, they hide it, faces pressed to each other’s shoulders. Just holding onto each other like they’re still all that’s left to them in the world.

*

“I’m not asking to die.”

Steve makes a noise like a breath and a cry combined that he muffles and then visibly gets under control. He nods, carefully. Says, “that’s good.” Bucky can almost ignore the way Steve’s voice shudders over the words, the way shoulders are still tense, braced for a blow.

Bucky takes a deep breath. 

“I just can’t be awake knowing the wrong person with the right words could send me off to do all the stuff that has me wanting to stop existing already.”

He stops, heaving in another breath. Breathing never used to be so much of a conscious thing, he’s sure, but now it feels like something he could just forget to do. Fuck Hydra.

“Okay, I get that,” Steve says. Sam’s obviously coached him, maybe he even had a word with Barton or Wanda. But the way he looks at Bucky, waiting for him to keep going, that’s still all Steve.

“I don’t-” Bucky stops, swallowing. “I don’t want you to have to stop me –”

“Bucky –”

“No, because our luck’s gunna run out. You’re gunna have to kill me one day if we just keep repeating this.” Bucky carefully unclenches his hand. “I don’t want that for you. And I don’t want to wake up with your blood on me.

“And… last time,” Bucky continues, “You were all I cared about. Now… now there’s Sam, and Lang and his fucking ants, and Wanda. And all the rest of your misfit idiots. If I killed any of them… Steve. I can’t.”

He shakes his head, can’t stop doing it, meeting Steve’s eyes to plead with him. If he were more in control of himself, he’d reach out to touch him. But instead he says, “There’s gotta be something else. This is killing me, being this time bomb. I need you to help me.”

Steve looks away, swiping roughly at his cheeks, swallowing like he’s one more word from breaking down. He stands up, walks across the room and then back again. He stops, looking at Bucky, and just slumps, defeated. Bucky wants so badly to take it all back in that moment. He wishes with all of him that’s left, every part of him that’s not keeping him back from the brink, that he could just be fine, be what Steve needs.

“I don’t know what I can do,” Steve admits.

He’s crying still a little and he shakes his head as he wipes his cheeks again, as frustrated and sad as Bucky’s ever seen him, other than maybe the day his mom died.

Then he straightens his back, says, “okay, okay,” to himself a couple of times, and then pulls Bucky up off the couch into a quick hug again.

“We’ll figure something out,” Steve tells him, pushing Bucky back to look him in the face.

The only reason Bucky doesn’t break apart right then is Steve bringing a hand up to cup Bucky’s face and pulling him into a hug. 

“It’s gunna be okay, Buck. I promise.”

*

The night before Bucky’s gets put on back ice, they have a board game night, all of them – Sam had organised it, so he’d even managed to get T’Challa to put in an appearance, if by appearance Sam means destroy everyone at a game called Settlers of Catan.

Even better than T’Challa, though, from the perspective of someone (Bucky) who’s been watching Steve all week wondering when the other shoe was going to drop, Sam manages to get in contact with Natasha and the blonde Steve tells him is Carter’s niece. Both of them hug Steve tightly, and Bucky’s happy to see that after he looks lighter than he’s seen him for a long, long time, though sadly neither of them kiss him, this time.

It’s not a late night and it’s not a crazy one, either, but it takes Bucky’s mind off everything for a few hours. Since T’Challa and Steve worked out the temporary freezing alternative, Bucky’s been sleeping better, not been disassociating as much. Just knowing it’s not permanent helps, for now. So Bucky’s able to appreciate what Sam’s done for Steve tonight, getting as many of his people together for this last night.

Bucky knows it’s for him, too, but it’s Steve that matters.

And he’s been thinking for a while now he needs to have a chat with Sam about that, before he goes under.

Bucky catches him on his own with a beer in his hand when Sam’s just started dancing and is probably about the right mood for this chat, hooking his arm with his own and pulling him aside.

Bucky finds he can’t look Sam in the eye, but he pins Sam a little against a wall and then gears himself up and says, “You’re gunna look after Steve, aren’t you? You’ve gotta look after him, Sam.”

Sam laughs, once, quick and then cut off as he looks into Bucky’s face and obviously catches up to his understanding of everything Bucky and Steve are and have been to each other, and realises this is serious.

“Oh, man, of course,” Sam says. He jostles Bucky playfully, carefully, looking at him searchingly. “You know I will. I’ve got his back.”

Bucky nods. And nods again, and then steps back to give Sam back his personal space. Sam just smiles at him, understanding and a little amused, too.

“I know,” Bucky says. “I do know, just needed to say it.” He runs his hand through his hair, turning, thinking he’ll go lock himself in the bathroom for a minute before joining back in with the last human company he’ll have in a while.

Then, though, he remembers something else he really should say, turning back only to find Sam still watching him, almost like he’s waiting for the rest.

“I wouldn’t be doing this without you,” Bucky tells him, flushing red. “If you weren’t here for him,” he explains, “no way I’d leave him on his own. But you’ll look out for him.”

Sam nods, smile growing into something that invites Bucky to smile back. “I will,” he says. He pushes himself off the wall Bucky’d nearly pinned him to and reaches for him, waiting for Bucky’s response before pulling him into a loose hug. “I’ve got your back, too,” he adds.

Bucky relaxes, holding onto Sam, gripping onto his shirt so it’s a loose hug but he’s still holding tight. He gets himself under control, swallowing, until he can say “thank you” without his voice shaking.

*

As he relaxes into the ice the next morning, safe in the knowledge that the cold, and the quiet, and the nothing are coming, he looks out at Steve and knows he’ll be there waiting for him when it’s time for him to wake up.

Instead of the dark, bloody, shaking feeling he’s been balling up in his brain and in his stomach since he pulled Steve from the Potomac, he feels light. 

He feels cold, cold and clarity.

He feels hope.

***

**Author's Note:**

> warnings: emetophobes probably shouldn't read this; suicidal ideation and black humour to varying degrees throughout; Bucky's very particular prosthetic issues at the end of the film continue to be an issue throughout (i.e. his prosthetic has been painfully removed/lost and in my head T'Challa's working on it between then and an undetermined point in the future when Bucky'll wake up; in the meantime Bucky has one arm); POV character experiences disassociation and has violent episodes resulting in physical (self?) harm to that character.
> 
> explanations:
> 
> so i wrote this in just over 24 hours immediately after watching the film, which is something i have never done. apologies if there are any mistakes, especially continuity wise. please do let me know if you catch any! i just really had to write out my feelings over how bucky got from the end of the film to the mid-credit scene. because my immediate reaction was not totally happy, and then i thought about it. and this fic is the result of those thoughts.
> 
> this was originally meant to be sam/steve/bucky(/nat?) but i failed at that, so maybe there'll be more one day.
> 
> um, so i know there are a couple of things left very ambiguous so i just want to state, like, these were my thoughts i didn't manage to strong arm into this fic: nat and sharon stay very much in touch with our secret avengers and bring things back and forth to them, joining in on missions whenever its covert enough. t'challa lets them stay at his whenever they want but they probably get a helicarrier or meet up with fury in his and rather than staying in one place once bucky's recovery is put on hold. clint's family are definitely at a safe house/his house remains a safe house, and him and scott go home to the states to hang out with their kids A WHOLE LOT.


End file.
